Christopher Poole Moot

2003internet figureclassic

Christopher Poole, known online as moot, is the New York teenager who launched the 4chan imageboard in 2003 and later became famous when 4chan users hacked the 2009 Time 100 poll to vote him World's Most Influential Person. The moot handle is one of the most recognized names of early web culture, tied to the site that spawned much of 2000s meme output.

4chan memesimageboard memessomething awful memesearly internet memeslate 2000s memes

Overview

moot is the online handle used by Christopher Poole, the founder of the English-language imageboard 4chan3. He picked up the name on the Something Awful forums before starting his own site, and kept using it in nearly every public appearance tied to 4chan for more than a decade6. For most of that stretch he avoided photos and kept his real identity out of the press.

The moot handle stayed attached to 4chan even after Poole's legal name went public. By the time the Wall Street Journal identified him in 2008 the two names had already fused in the minds of anyone paying attention to imageboards, and coverage kept pairing them for years3. Outside 4chan he later ran the remix site Canvas, the drawing app DrawQuest, and eventually took a job at Google6.

The name reached its widest audience in April 2009 when 4chan users voted moot to the top of the Time 100 online poll and hid a coded message inside the leaderboard1. That single stunt turned an obscure webmaster handle into a mainstream news story.

How It Spread

The moot handle went viral in April 2009 when 4chan users tore through the Time 100 online poll. After the ballot URL was found to accept simple HTTP GET requests, /b/ posters wrote scripts that fired votes at any candidate ID they wanted1. Time announced on April 27th that Poole had won World's Most Influential Person with 16,794,368 votes1. The stunt had a second layer: the first letters of the top 21 finishers, read in order, spelled 'marblecake also the game,' a wink at the IRC channel used during Project Chanology raids1.

In May 2010, TechCrunch reported that Poole had raised $625,000 for a stealth project called Canvas Networks, based on an SEC filing2. The Canvas private beta opened on January 31st, 2011 with about 4,000 invites, and Vice noted the odd choice to require Facebook Connect for logins during that phase, breaking with 4chan's anonymous model7. When Canvas opened publicly on September 6th, 2011, Digital Trends described it as a Photoshop remix hub built to track how a meme mutates from the first upload to its ten-thousandth edit5.

In November 2012, Poole's lawyer sent a cease and desist letter to the Oregon startup Moot.it, arguing that his decade of use of the handle gave him a protectable right of publicity4. The BBC covered the dispute and quoted the letter's line that confusion between the two names would be 'unavoidable' among 4chan readers8. Moot.it's lawyers publicly refused to drop the name and threatened a malicious prosecution suit if another letter arrived4.

How to Use This Meme

moot is a person and a handle, not a template you remix. In practice, the name shows up when people are talking about 4chan's early history, the 2009 Time 100 hack, or the founder image that goes with those stories6. Common convention is to spell it in lowercase, matching how Poole signed off on 4chan announcements and interviews3.

Frequently Asked Questions

Christopher Poole Moot

2003internet figureclassic

Christopher Poole, known online as moot, is the New York teenager who launched the 4chan imageboard in 2003 and later became famous when 4chan users hacked the 2009 Time 100 poll to vote him World's Most Influential Person. The moot handle is one of the most recognized names of early web culture, tied to the site that spawned much of 2000s meme output.

4chan memes imageboard memes something awful memes early internet memes late 2000s memes

Overview

moot is the online handle used by Christopher Poole, the founder of the English-language imageboard 4chan3. He picked up the name on the Something Awful forums before starting his own site, and kept using it in nearly every public appearance tied to 4chan for more than a decade6. For most of that stretch he avoided photos and kept his real identity out of the press.

The moot handle stayed attached to 4chan even after Poole's legal name went public. By the time the Wall Street Journal identified him in 2008 the two names had already fused in the minds of anyone paying attention to imageboards, and coverage kept pairing them for years3. Outside 4chan he later ran the remix site Canvas, the drawing app DrawQuest, and eventually took a job at Google6.

The name reached its widest audience in April 2009 when 4chan users voted moot to the top of the Time 100 online poll and hid a coded message inside the leaderboard1. That single stunt turned an obscure webmaster handle into a mainstream news story.

How It Spread

The moot handle went viral in April 2009 when 4chan users tore through the Time 100 online poll. After the ballot URL was found to accept simple HTTP GET requests, /b/ posters wrote scripts that fired votes at any candidate ID they wanted1. Time announced on April 27th that Poole had won World's Most Influential Person with 16,794,368 votes1. The stunt had a second layer: the first letters of the top 21 finishers, read in order, spelled 'marblecake also the game,' a wink at the IRC channel used during Project Chanology raids1.

In May 2010, TechCrunch reported that Poole had raised $625,000 for a stealth project called Canvas Networks, based on an SEC filing2. The Canvas private beta opened on January 31st, 2011 with about 4,000 invites, and Vice noted the odd choice to require Facebook Connect for logins during that phase, breaking with 4chan's anonymous model7. When Canvas opened publicly on September 6th, 2011, Digital Trends described it as a Photoshop remix hub built to track how a meme mutates from the first upload to its ten-thousandth edit5.

In November 2012, Poole's lawyer sent a cease and desist letter to the Oregon startup Moot.it, arguing that his decade of use of the handle gave him a protectable right of publicity4. The BBC covered the dispute and quoted the letter's line that confusion between the two names would be 'unavoidable' among 4chan readers8. Moot.it's lawyers publicly refused to drop the name and threatened a malicious prosecution suit if another letter arrived4.

How to Use This Meme

moot is a person and a handle, not a template you remix. In practice, the name shows up when people are talking about 4chan's early history, the 2009 Time 100 hack, or the founder image that goes with those stories6. Common convention is to spell it in lowercase, matching how Poole signed off on 4chan announcements and interviews3.

Frequently Asked Questions